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Music, a refuge from these times

There’s times when the only solution is music. The problem? Here’s a start, thieves steal from a man having an epileptic seizure at a bus stop in Melbourne. Welcome to Christmas, mate. It’s better to give than to receive. Where’s your wallet?

Or this: the endless stream of disclosures of the vile villainy of those men who purported or purport to be servants of God. The odious calumny of who they say there were/are – supposedly men of the spirit– who abase that calling by abusing the young, innocent and vulnerable.

Or this: the descent of democratic debate into a scabrous snakepit where the naked greed for power is dressed in the cloth of sanctimonious outrage.

In such times that overwhelm the eyes, mind and heart, the only solution is music. Thank you Ralph Vaughan Williams.

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Thank you for The Lark Ascending.

In 16 minutes, the meanness of these times is spirited away. What is left, now open to the light and air, is quite simple in its observance. It’s listening to beauty. It’s simple in theory. However, in reality, it can be quite difficult; the world has a habit of getting in the way.

But step back for it is worth it. Like all music that travels deep into you, it lifts you out of time and into the realm of itself. You live within it for however long or short the sounds resonate. The Lark Ascending does this for it is timeless; that being so it is outside times such as these.

I’ve been listening a lot to it recently.

There are many versions of The Lark Ascending, but my favourite is from 1972 recorded at the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, with Iona Brown on violin and conducted by Neville Marriner (later SirNeville). The album also includes Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Fantasia on Greensleeves and Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus.

The album cover image, as with nearly every recording of The Lark Ascending or everything by Williams, is by the Romantic painter John Constable. (The artist was actually married in 1816 at St Martins inthe Field.)

Vaughan Williams wrote the piece in 1914 as the nations of Europe began sending a generation of men to their deaths. The WWI version was for only two instruments: piano and violin. After the war, the scorefor orchestra was composed. A version can be viewed here.

Composer Lyle Chan, in the liner notes for The Lark Ascending: The Timeless Music of Vaughan Williams (ABC Records) wrote: ‘‘Famous as it is, it is difficult today to appreciate how radical The Lark Ascendingmust have been for England in 1914 ... with its huge unmeasured paragraphs for solo violin, dangerously free in rhythmic conception, its continual deflection of traditional cadences, and an unabashed pastoralism, it is a work without real precedent. It was not heard publicly until 1920 only with piano, the orchestral premiere was the following year.’’

The orchestral version that has been voted many times in Britain as one of the best-loved classical pieces, and a favourite Desert Island disc, despite criticism for its ‘‘aimless rhapsody’’.

The writer George Meredith wrote the poem of the same name in the early 1880s. Siegfried Sassoon in his biography, Meredith, sung its praises. ‘‘There are certain poems in the English language of which itcan be said with conviction that they are matchless of their kind. I say it now of The Lark Ascending, asustained lyric of 120 lines which never for a moment falls short of the effect aimed at, soars up and up with the song it imitates and unites inspired spontaneity with a demonstration of effortless technical ingenuity.

‘‘At a first reading it may seem rather breathtaking. As usual, Meredith demanded a tour de force of mental concentration. But on this fortunate occasion he was so completely successful that one has onlyto reread the poem a few times to become aware of its perfection.’’

Meredith himself at the time of writing said he felt he was under the ‘‘curse of verse’’. Never has a curse been so spellbinding.

Vaughan Williams used an extract of the poem at the publication of hiswork. It reads:

He rises and begins to round,He drops the silver chain of sound,Of many links without a break,In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.For singing till his heaven fills,‘Tis love of earth that he instils,And ever winging up and up,Our valley is his golden cupAnd he the wine which overflowsto lift us with him as he goes.Till lost on his aerial ringsIn light, and then the fancy sings.

Vaughan Williams captured perfection in the violin solo’s emulation of a lark not only ascending but diving, and gliding with the breeze.

The solo flows back and forth from the lower notes to the most high on high, taking no notice of meter, stopping and starting, catching its breath and then tremulously darting away again. As an evocation ofnature, it’s peerless.

In times such as these, it’s a refuge.

2 comments so far

"When the world fall apart, some things stay in placeLevi Stubbs' tear run down his face......."

There is healing in music for all. Amen Billy, amen.

Commenter

DC

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

November 30, 2012, 4:59PM

I am disappointed this piece wasn't about music in general, as opposed to one piece.

All music has its place. I am mostly interested in the music that is socially relevant for the times we live in. I can and do enjoy Haydn and others from the past. Miles, Duke, Professor Longhair etc. But I learn from them and do my best to see the road ahead. There is much great music being released by living composers who have rent to pay. How about discussing them?

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